Apple Releases Update to Java for OS X to Version 1.6.0_31

Good News ! Makes me feel safer on viewing a lot of web pages!:D

Are you getting confused with Javascript?

Java ( applets) isn't used frequently on websites these days.

Apple announced they wouldn't be porting any new versions of Java, but this is just a fix to the current version of Apple's Java (SE6), which is still being supported.

The next version of Java (SE7) will still be coming to the Mac, it just won't have Apple branding.

Java is a programming language, it was pretty big at one point,

Was? It still --IS-- the most popular programming language on the planet, with Android and the ENTIRE enterprise market as its main strongholds.

Also, it is more than just a programming language or a simple framework. It is a full operating system-independent software platform.

But yes, C# and .NET are nice. And thanks to the people behind Mono, very interoperable with Java.

When going to Utilities, I do see "Java Preferences," but when I click it, it says I need Java runtime, and asks me to install. I have been able to go to websites without any problems, so is this something that I need to install?

Thanks for all the help

Yeah, I believe the UI wrapper for configuring the runtime is always present, but if you don’t have it, you don’t get the install prompt.

...and if you don’t have the JRE installed, you won’t get a system update for Java.

What is java used for

Java is a programming language, it was pretty big at one point, one of the big advantages was that it compiled to an intermediate code that’s interpreted, so it allowed for “write once, run everywhere”, particularly as a client application.

It’s also used in backend services, and in fact, we did quite a bit of Java using J2EE (it’s an enterprise framework that provides DB/messaging/etc.), also did some client apps (wrote a CMS back in the late 90’s, I think it’s still in the Sun or Oracle catalog archives).

It was easy to distribute Java apps through a web interface, so you got centralized app management combined with a rich client environment.

Android apps can also be written in Java which let’s them be run on different CPU architectures and such. Since they’re run through a runtime interpreter (that’s the JRE that’s mentioned in the OSX configuration app, Java Runtime Engine), they’re [generally] not as fast as native code.

There’s still some client apps written in it like VPN/remote access apps, and things like the Oracle DB dev tool. It’s kind of few and far between for client apps, but still in reasonably decent use for the web (any sites you see running *.jsp are Java based backends).

Syntactically C# borrows quite a bit from Java (one reason I went from Java to C#).

If you use Xcode and upload apps to the App Store, don't install this Java update yet as it will break uploading to the Mac App Store (possibly iOS also). It breaks both Xcode App Store uploading and Application Loader uploading.

Care to mention the source for this information?

Just downloaded and installed the update without issue. I wish Apple was a bit more proactive with the security patches, as it seems that Mac users are left vulnerable longer than our Windows brethren.